The Pakistan Army stated this Sunday, October 12, that 23 Pakistani soldiers and more than 200 Afghan Taliban fighters and insurgents linked to Kabul fundamentalists died in armed clashes on the country’s border with Afghanistan.
“During the night clashes, 23 brave sons of Pakistan embraced martyrdom while defending the territorial integrity of our beloved homeland in the face of this outrageous action, while 29 soldiers were injured,” the Pakistan Army’s communications wing (ISPR) said in a statement.
The source estimated that according to “credible” intelligence information, “more than 200 Taliban fighters and affiliated terrorists have been neutralized, while the number of injured is much higher.”
The number differs from that indicated today by the Taliban in Kabul, who stated that 58 Pakistani soldiers and nine Afghans died in clashes on the border between the two countries, where fighting continues.
Pakistan assures that the clashes began last night with “unprovoked” attacks from Afghanistan, while Kabul considers its action a “retaliation operation” for the bombings that, according to the Taliban, Islamabad carried out on Afghan territory last Friday.
Pakistan and Afghanistan warned today that they will respond to future attacks.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, specified in a message published on his personal account on the social network X that the Pakistani response is not aimed at the Afghan civilian population.
“Unlike the Taliban forces, we act with extreme caution in our defensive responses to avoid the loss of civilian lives. We hope that the Taliban government will adopt concrete measures against terrorist elements and their perpetrators, who seek to sabotage relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he said.
Islamabad closed all border crossing points between Pakistan and Afghanistanincluding those in Torkham in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and Chaman in Balochistan.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan deteriorated after the fundamentalists took power in Kabul in August 2021, following the departure of US troops from the country and the fall of the Republican Government.
The Pakistani Government accuses the Afghan Taliban of providing shelter to members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP – ideological brothers of the Kabul fundamentalists) to carry out attacks in Pakistan. Kabul denies the accusations.
In recent months, Pakistani Taliban TTP militants have intensified a campaign of violence against Pakistani security forces in mountainous areas bordering Afghanistan, ruled by the Taliban since 2021.
A report by the United Nations Security Council, published earlier this year, concluded that the TTP “was probably the foreign extremist group in Afghanistan that benefited most” from the return of the Taliban to power, “who welcomed and actively supported” the movement.
Kabul firmly denies the accusations and returns them to Islamabad, accusing Pakistan of supporting “terrorist” groups, namely the regional branch of the Islamic State (IS) group.
This year, as of September 15, security forces have carried out more than 10,000 operations, in which 970 militants have been killed. In the same period, 311 soldiers and 73 police officers died, he added. Indeed, 2024 was the deadliest year for Pakistan in almost a decade, with more than 1,600 dead in these episodes of violence.